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Yes, Weinsteining Is Out of Hand
So this morning I was about to compose my brief, point-by-point summary of my Highly Unpopular Thesis (truly, I was), when the morning went horribly awry. My friend Arun Kapil posted a link on Facebook to this article: “Is ‘Weinsteining’ Getting Out of Hand?”
“Our current discourse on sexual harassment,” wrote Cathy Young,
not only conflates predation with “low-level lechery” but generally reduces women to sexual innocents who must be shielded not only from sexual advances but from bawdy jokes. This did not begin with Weinstein or the #MeToo movement; however, the current moral panic is making the situation worse.
I “liked” the post and wrote, “Yes, this is getting out of control and is clearly a form of hysteria.” Meant to leave it at that. But then Facebook told me that people had replied to my comment. And I discovered that I hold another Highly Unpopular view, it seems. Among the comments: “Keep your hands and comments to yourself. That is the lesson to be learned and if people lose their jobs over it, tough [redacted].”
Another: “Well, people need to be very thoughtful and very careful when they say or do something personal. WT[redacted] is so hard about that? If you are so clueless that can’t tell when a particular behavior is welcome or unwelcome, you shouldn’t be allowed in the sandbox.”
I wound up writing a post-length reply that of course I should have just published here in the first place. I’ll come back to my original Highly Unpopular Thesis tomorrow; today got spent defending this–apparently–Highly Unpopular view. I do think it’s an important issue, though.
***
I am now in a position to destroy many men’s lives, careers, and reputations by saying, “He harassed me.” Many men have, over the course of my academic and professional career, behaved in a way that I found charmingly flirtatious — but which, if I described it as unwelcome, or traumatic, would meet contemporary definitions of “harassment.” This category is now so broad and vague as to compass “the typical flirtation that characterizes the interaction of men and women and brings joy and amusement to so many of our lives–but as it happens, in this case, I didn’t like it.”
I could now, on a whim, destroy the career of an Oxford don I recall who one drunken evening danced with me when I was an undergraduate, patted my bum, and slurred, “I’ve been dying to do this to Berlinski all term!” That is in fact what happened. I was amused and flattered. I thought nothing of it. But if I truthfully recounted the details of this event now, merely changing the words “flattered and amused” to “traumatized and terrified,” I would destroy his life. Even if the charge couldn’t be proven, legally, the accusation is now the punishment in itself. Do you doubt this? That I have the power to destroy his life, and the lives of literally hundreds of men who have flirted me over the years — co-workers, employers, men who in some way held a position of power over me — by accurately describing a flirtation or moment of impropriety, one that in fact I either enjoyed or brushed off as harmless, merely by adding the words, “I was traumatized by it?”
The definition of harassment is now entirely subjective: The things men and women very naturally do — flirt, play, desire, tease — become harassment only by virtue of the words, “I was traumatized by it.” The onus properly to understand the interaction and its emotional subtleties seems always to fall entirely on the man: He should have understood that his behavior wasn’t welcome. Why is understanding the complex eternal dance between men and women entirely his responsibility? Perhaps she should have understood that his behavior wasn’t harmful? Perhaps she should have understood that it was sweet, or clumsy — or perhaps that he genuinely believed it to be welcome?
[Arun’s friend] asks, “WT[redacted] is so hard about [figuring out whether an advance is welcome]?” Seriously? WT[redacted] is so hard about figuring out whether someone is attracted to you? Everything is so hard about it! The difficulty of ascertaining whether one’s passions are reciprocated is the theme of 90 percent of human literature and every romantic comedy or pop song ever written. We’re talking about the most complex of human emotions, the most powerful of human drives, and you say, “WT[redacted] is so hard about that?” Google “Is she attracted to me?” to see how desperate men are to figure this out.
It is not a healthy situation when I have the power to ruin men’s lives simply by changing the way I feel about a memory. This is a sign of cultural hysteria. Anyone who imagines men and women will cease to be attracted to each other — and to behave as if they were — in the workplace, or any other place, is delusional.
I think Leon Wieseltier’s often a windbag, but I would have read any journal he edited with interest; I am sorry I won’t have the chance. From what I’ve read of the alleged facts of the accusations against him — and remember, these are not facts as a court of law would view it, we do not know for sure that this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — it sounds as if Leon was a flirt. ‘The only problem with that dress is that it’s not tight enough,” he reportedly said. Countless men — some of them in a “position of power” over me — men who perhaps could have offered me work, or had offered me work — have said similar things to me. I literally thought nothing of it. I was amused. The comment sounds like the normal banter of men and women the world around.
At times, we have learned, when he was drunk, Leon made passes at co-workers. Who hasn’t? Seriously, who — in the real world — hasn’t been drunk and made a pass at a co-worker? But somehow from this we are to conclude that “Leon delighted in making young women sexually uncomfortable.” (Per the Atlantic.) Actually, we know no such thing from the facts as described: We know only that he was a flirt who made passes at his co-workers. These crimes are so unforgivable that without benefit of a trial his career must be destroyed; the accusation is itself the punishment — agonizing public humiliation, the exposure to the world of his human sexual foibles. I’m sure this makes him “uncomfortable” too — in fact, almost certainly more “uncomfortable” than any woman has a right to be under the circumstances described in these salacious articles.
Per the Atlantic: “One night most of the staff went out. Leon cornered me by the bathroom and kissed me. I clapped my hand over my mouth and he said, ‘I’ve always known you’d do that.’”
So?
What do we have here: A man kissed a woman. He said, “I’ve always known you’d do that.” We know nothing else about this. It is only the grave prose surrounding this description that makes this sound sinister: “Decidedly not a joke” … “I felt terrible afterwards.” The only thing that transforms this story from “a drunken kiss at a party” to “a crime worthy of lifetime banishment from the public square” are the words, “I felt terrible afterwards.” But surely what she felt should be less important than what happened? — and what happened, apparently, is that he kissed her. We do not know why she felt terrible. We do not even ask whether he felt terrible: It feels terrible to be rejected; so I reckon he probably did feel terrible. But this perfectly normal thing, this thing that happens between men and women all the time, and always will, has been pathologized beyond all reason.
Weinstein, allegedly, raped women. There is a universe of difference between rape and Leon’s alleged crimes. He was prone to “passing along a mundane bit of office gossip, suggesting it was a great secret, and telling me that if I ever revealed it to anyone, he’d “tell people we’re [redacted].” This, apparently, is unpardonable. Gossiping and using the word “[redacted].” Casual, vulgar banter — typical of the way men and women in New York really speak to each other each and every day.
If saying such things is now an unpardonable crime, we will all go to the gallows. Or we will all cease to be human.
***
I’m really curious to know whether you agree. It’s just common sense, right? But some people seem to disagree with me strenuously. I mean, more than you guys disagree with me about Trump.
Do you guys agree with me about this?
Published in General
Claire, I agree with you of course. It’s actually hard to see how any sane person could disagree (and yes, I say that with full awareness of what it means about your Facebook trolls; but on your other post you suggest that you have chosen to tolerate, if not exactly welcome, trolls; so if you want to read the rantings of crazy people – help yourself).
I am a management-side labor lawyer, and over the course of 30 plus years I have defended many sexual harassment lawsuits, conducted internal investigations for employers, and done many sexual harassment training sessions. Things are much worse now, of course, due to the viciousness of cyber-mobs and the cowardice of employers who seem anxious to throw an accused employee under the bus immediately, rather than follow the dictates of due process.
But I do have one observation to share, which could only be called “good news” against the backdrop of the reign of terror which Facebook and Twitter are creating. When I am doing sexual harassment training, I describe what qualifies as sexual harassment, and then I often ask the group (which usually is several dozen people), “Is there one particular person in your company who regularly goes over that line?” You would be amazed how many hands go up. Amazed, really. It’s not everyone who is doing it. It is a select few. I wouldn’t call these men predators. I’m sure that many of them think that their conduct is merely harmless flirtation. But the women in these companies can tell the difference. Surprisingly, for the most part, they shake it off. They deal with it. But I have learned that they all know the identity of “that guy.”
That’s useful to think about, Larry! Thanks for the comment.
There is always “that guy” just like there is always “that girl”. I notice that “that guy” never gets tossed. Just other males around him. And “that girl” seems to do just fine climbing the corporate latter leaving destroyed men in her wake. But hey as long as it is men that are destroyed it is all good. Men are expendable don’t cha know.
Thank you, Ms. Berlinski. I wrote much the same in a Comment in the WS Journal recently. Especially now that we’ve decided as a society that certain actions—real, alleged or even imagined—are not subject to any statute of limitations it needed to be said.
As a father of 2 attractive grown daughters, we’ve had this discussion. As an older male I can still remember when as a teen aged boy and being besieged by an attack of the raging hormones, it was all too easy to misunderstand wishes and desires for signals….was that a signal? Was it ok to move a hand here? To hug…to dance more closely…?? How about when a woman puts your hand on her breast—for the first time—and says that she’ll say when to stop…if to stop?
Now put that in a college or professional setting. At an office party or at a picnic on a walk—-and now fast forward 10 or 20 or 30 years and something, anything, triggers an urge to go public….only with the slightest change of adjective what was a rite of passage, a normal and pleasant memory that now makes you laugh at yourself for the innocence it conjures up— but now it ruins a life, a career, a family ….a circle of friends, a neighborhood…a society.
We need to be able to establish gradation and time-lines and perhaps even some agreement within a society that we address these matters in entirely private circumstances until and unless the gravity and evidence of an offense is so overwhelming that it must be in society’s interest to know what is being alleged….We’ve become the flip-side of the Muslim woman who needs 3 male witnesses that she’s been raped….this is no way to run an ethical, healthy Judeo-Christian society in the 21st Century.
But that doesn’t sell newspapers, magazines or generate website hits.
Yeah, “that guy” isn’t how most women think of most men, and even most “that guys” probably aren’t predators.
Moreover, most women have no desire to officially expose “that guy”, and would rather quietly warn other women if it looks like “that guy” might be a problem. Grapevine communication is pretty efficient at disseminating these things (which can make it rather startling to be the only one in the institution who didn’t get the memo in time, but those of us left out of the loop are small in number and usually negligible).
The very awfulness of wrongful accusations probably makes them seem more common than they are. Many women are still willing to put themselves at risk of being the false negative so that some poor man does not become a false positive.
I don’t see those sacrificing women in my line of work. I’m much more likely to see women who set men up and lie about them.
I have one case where a woman was probably beaten by her boyfriend, but in order to not incur the further wrath of child protective services and possibly lose her child permanently, she and her boyfriend found some hapless loser (well, it can’t be proven, but it’s my belief) on the side of the road, befriended him that night and then called the cops on him for beating her.
Some people are just no good at all.
Re: comment #37
Wow.
Skyler, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your current line of work?
Claire,
To me, the real culprit in all of this is the loosely defined “sexual harassment”. A close look at the original law implies really sexual extortion. If your employer tells you to meet him at the motel 6 at 8 pm and then he says tomorrow either I’ll give you that raise or you’re fired, this is an obvious case of sexual extortion. This is a step lower than actual rape but considering the weakness of the position of the woman should be given felony consideration. However, this specific crime should have been called sexual extortion and not lumped in with every other minor tasteless behavior known to man and woman. The term sexual harassment could then be classified as a misdemeanor, something that one doesn’t want on one’s record but none the less a minor infraction.
Meanwhile, we are chasing down the bum pinchers with the same zeal as Harvey King of the Casting Couch, “to hell with extortion let’s just rape’em”. Harv has spent an entire week in rehab for his sex addiction. Now he’s all better. Claire all of this is ultimately due to a society that has replaced morality with therapy. Men have a very strong sex drive. I think you may have noticed that. However, because for a man the results of sexuality occur outside of him and in the woman’s body, men require a strict internal moral order to control themselves in many different tempting situations. Therapy isn’t the answer for men. Therapy often results in a more sophisticated male seducer. Therapy is more the answer for women because she doesn’t need any moral code to remind her that the results of last night’s tryst could be a brand new human growing inside of her. That part is concretely clear to her at all times. She just needs a little coaching on how to handle the boys when they get too frisky. Having dumped the primary male means of control and even encouraged women to think of themselves sexually as men, we have created a society that is schizophrenic in its attitude to the fundamental bond, man to woman, that is the core of the family and the sustainer of human life itself.
Did I mention how your eyes sparkle when you smile…..Oh never mind Claire!
Regards,
Jim
I see government has the answer.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/23102/pc-gone-wild-ca-high-schoolers-taught-they-must-hank-berrien
I feel so strongly about this issue that I wrote a post about it. :) @claire might like what I wrote. :)
I know there will be many people harmed in this witch hunt climate.
The news outlets are simply raking in the money from the sensationalized stories.
Women need to treat their lives with respect and seriousness. When an assault occurs, it should be handled as the crime it is.
That said, this is the Justice Department’s definition, and I see a lot of imprecise language here. What the Justice Department calls “sexual assault” sounds like rape to me. I don’t know why we need new terminology. At any rate, here it is:
If a crime has occurred, it should be handled as such.
If there is no tangible evidence or witnesses, I don’t think it can be prosecuted. Especially five, ten, or twenty years afterward.
These accusations are wrong too if they can’t be backed up by actual proof. If charges can be filed, then they should be handled by the police and a court, not the New York Times.
MarciN, Sorry: read your post. Thought it was excellent. Put it on my Facebook page. Then noticed where you wrote you didn’t even want it on the main feed So, took it off.
Please let me know if you don’t mind having it on my Facebook page.
Looking at your picture Claire, I have no doubts about this at all.
At one time it was taboo to tell dirty jokes in front of women for fear that they would be offended. I’d still feel uncomfortable doing so today. In one of his novels (Double Star) Robert Heinlein said that women tend to be more symbolically oriented than men, and for this reason men needed to be extra careful when speaking in the presence of women. Is the current climate of concern about sexual harassment really anything new? Women have always been offended by some things men are apt to say. Have the feminists simply updated the list of topics women choose to be offended by? What is new is that they have escalated what used to be a matter of social impropriety to a matter of law enforced by draconian penalties and a prolonged statute of limitations. For most matters of speech the penalties need to be revised downwards and a reasonable statute of limitations should be adopted. And in matters that affect his employment the man should always have the right to know exactly what his offense was and the right to confront his accuser.
No, that’s okay. That’s so sweet. Thank you.
I’m a lawyer doing family law and I do a lot of CPS appointments representing parents or children in cases where parental rights are at risk of being terminated.
There’s gotta be some stories in there! Something you could write up & post that doesn’t conflict with legal & ethical discretion, of course!
I completely agree. Stuff said a decade ago doesn’t need to be brought up now.
Whoa!! I always say we’re living Brave New World, but this is the most apt quotation I’ve ever read about our current, three-felonies-a-day society. @skyler if you’re still on, what book is this from?
Y’know how the Middle Ages ended abruptly on the date of the Battle of Bosworth (1485)? Well, looking back over the past few months, it seems to me an era ended , overnight, when Hugh Hefner died. He was the last Vestal, courageously keeping the sacred flames lit in the Temple of Unbridled Pleasure. Après lui, le déluge (of sanctimony).
Here’s what I think is ROFL funny: if sexual harassment in the workplace is soooo baaaad, why is every prime time TV show all about sex in the workplace, romantic attraction among the gorgeous doctors, lawyers, cops?
It’s cuz we still know, don’t we? that heterosexual attraction is not something perverse or creepy. It’s what makes the world go ’round, fuh cryin’ out loud!
Normal heterosexual behavior is being marginalized and even criminalized.
i can hear the screams: “Rape is not “normal heterosexual behavior”!
Tru dat. But as you point out, flirtation is not rape.
I feel sad for the young women deprived of what used to be called secondary sexual gratification: the looks, the comments, the wolf whistles…it takes courage now to even admit, as you do, Claire, that we used to find these things pleasurable!
The legal statutes of limitation on sexual “assault” of any degree have been getting longer and longer. And I think it’s a due process violation. How can the accused prepare a defense after, say, 12 years, to a charge involving an act which by its very nature involves only the perp and the vic? I mean, there’s no statute on murder, but to charge somebody with murder you have to have a dead body. There is no corpus delicti when the “crime” is a pat on the butt or a suggestive comment.
But we’re way beyond that. It doesnt matter whether or not the limitation of time for prosecution has run. Witness Kevin Spacey, who has been summarily deprived of his livelihood without any kind of process.
oh and remember Oscar Wilde? He sued Bosie’s dad for calling him a “somdomite”. Truth is a defense to slander, so Reading Gaol here he comes. I heard last week that one gent is suing his accuser–wonder if he’s familiar with Wilde’s ordeal?
Further: If the accused denies the charge, and says the alleged vic is lying or dishonest, he can be civilly sued for slandering her, even when the SoL on the alleged assault is up. Got that? He can’t even protest his innocence without legal exposure!
In one way, I can’t wait for some erstwhile nymphet to accuse Ellen or Oprah. But on the other hand, when that happens, and it will, no one of either gender will be safe. We will all lie awake at night reviewing things we may have said, gestures we may have made, twenty or thirty years ago.
The times are parlous.
I cannot do more than like this in public, however, I think you lack a certain…delicacy. I will elucidate in PM.
The internet has made it infinitely easier for bullies, small minded bigots, jealous or envious colleagues and coworkers and just fools to join lynch mobs and for the far left to use these pathologies politically to carry out Alinsky tactics against its enemies and discipline its friends. Way back when, few American women knew how to handle harmless flirting, and few American men, me included, knew how to handle harmless women’s flirtations, but this awkwardness and occasional embarrassment didn’t ruin people’s lives. We’re seeing Stalinist purges, Marxist correlation of forces but we’re also beginning to see some push back. Clearly more people are ready to react against PC, consider Trump’s election, but how do we undo the leverage we’ve given to these cultural pathologies? I think this is one of the reasons the leftist establishment that promotes this stuff is so rabidly anti Trump.
An irony here is that while Title IX gets nominally rolled back in the colleges, a less formal and even more vicious version gets rolled out over the entire working world. And the men just get fired. There is a French Revolution quality to it. Time to settle some scores!
Another irony is that Ashley Judd seems to have gotten the hysteria rolling with her accounts of Weinstein’s behavior. She was also the famous “nasty woman” at the anti-Trump “Woman’s March” where “pussy hats” were first deployed. Weinstein was marching there as well.
Another irony is that although Hillary has proclaimed that we just elected a sexual predator as president, none of his “victims” have #metooed him.
All of the men I have worked with are very careful in the workplace, and have been for at least a generation. We especially want to give women with “issues” a very wide berth.
Yet another irony is that now we have Tinder.
I saw that video:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/sexual-harassment/2751966?snl=1
I suspect that this is the real target of the “metoo” agenda.
It’s from Atlas Shrugged.
You have to watch giving a woman with “issues” too wide of berth. That too gives her rights to have you removed.
I agree with your post and this is the new generation, who is offended by everything, and social media has the power to destroy a person with mere words. Where everything from posting your religious views can get you expelled, to being barred from opening a restaurant (Chic Filet in Boston) to refusing to bake a cake, to classic books being banished from schools (To Kill a Mockingbird). Every word and gesture can be interpreted by someone as offensive and cause your life to be turned upside down. Your political views can banish you from speaking on campus or holding an after school event. Now all of a sudden, people are recollecting in droves, how they were sexually offended 30 years ago, and attempting to ruin people. Even the senior Bush is being accused at 93! Really? Thanks for writing a reasonable post that hopefully will be read by the younger crowd.
Oh, wow, I just realized — rather cluelessly — that what I wrote could come across as a boast about my amazing hypnotic power over men. I meant it the opposite way — “if a woman like me, who clearly doesn’t have amazing hypnotic power over men,* could do this so readily — and be so readily believed by everyone in the world — I’ve got a power no one should have, and thus we’ve got a real problem on our hands.” But thank you: That’s very flattering of you to say, and of course I was very flattered by it. (But I’m jotting it down here in my notebook in case. You never know: I might actually realize, twenty years from now, that I was totally traumatized by it.)
*Except for Jim, of course. My hypnotic power over him verges on the supernatural.
This calls to mind Skyler’s rules for beautiful women.
1. You should always ensure that you think a woman is beautiful.
2. The woman should always express surprise that anyone would find her beautiful.
3. The woman should never really be surprised, because knowing she is beautiful is a lot of what makes her beautiful.
I’ve grabbed women and been grabbed by women in multiple countries. It’s a good thing I’m not famous. BTW, I love Kevin Spacey’s work and always will.